


we are none of us our fathers' sons

by socialiststeverogers



Category: Kings
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, Post-Canon, jack is surprisingly good with kids, loosely bible-based, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1393159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socialiststeverogers/pseuds/socialiststeverogers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trust a member of the house of Benjamin to raise a child wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are none of us our fathers' sons

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short sad thing based off of bible canon, just like everything else to do with this stupid show. Sorry it's so depressing, Jack does bad things to my mind.

The boy grows up hearing stories of when he first met his father, although of course he doesn't have any memories of something that happened when he was barely a year old. How his mother ran with him in her arms to embrace his father, returning to Shiloh like an avenging angel at the head of a ragtag army, still disheveled from his victory over Silas’s forces. How his father embraced his mother and kissed him, to the wild cheers of the assembled crowds. The scene is indelibly printed in his mind from age six, when the court painter unveils a mural depicting it in the entrance hall of the palace in Shiloh. In the mural, the royal family has a light, a glow that encircles them, making them seem divine. It becomes a famous image, the trinity of king and queen and heir, past princess and present king and future prince, the essence of Gilboan monarchy.

It always bothers him, that painting. He has never seen his family as a trinity. Not because of his other siblings, born after his father’s ascension and never quite as special, quite as legendary as he was. Because as far as he is concerned, he has three parents: mother, father, and uncle.

Once, at about age six, he asked Uncle Jack why he wasn't in the painting. “You were there, weren't you? At the entrance into Shiloh?”

“I was,” said his uncle, reaching down to tousle the boy’s hair, which was as dark as his own if slightly longer. Jack smiled at the boy, asking innocent questions about the most important moments of his life as if they were facts in a schoolbook.

“Then why aren't you in the painting with mother and daddy and me?” 

“There wasn't enough space,” Jack answered, straightening up with the look that adults get when they lie to small children. “They had to erase me to fit in enough members of the ecstatic masses.” The boy smiles at the explanation, glad that his uncle could explain away what seemed to him to be a huge mistake.

His uncle’s easy explanations for complicated events make his childhood blissfully simple. His father rarely has time to explain anything to him, preferring to spend their time together fishing and playing catch and doing other agreeably fatherly things that color the king’s own childhood memories but have little place in the childhood of a prince. His mother spends the first years of his youth occupied by the births of his siblings, and the later years trying to balance motherhood and queenship and wifehood without falling into the mold left empty by her own mother. Only his uncle really had time for him. Prince Jack had famously refused to take any part in the new government formed by David after the deposition of Silas, saying that he was too tainted to touch the government headed by this new golden king. Of course, the king equally famously insisted that Jack take a position as his official adviser, but the position was mostly nominal, a tool that allowed Jack to stay close to the family.

As it was, Jack’s self-imposed lack of responsibility meant that he had time to spare for the small heir to the throne of Gilboa, in whom he saw so much of his younger self. Instead of attending the royal council, in the room where he’d been called traitor and king, he hid from his memories in the royal apartments, with the little prince. Michelle had redecorated after David took control, had scrapped every part of those rooms that reminded her and Jack of their childhood. The rooms where Jack found himself lying on the floor next to a little boy, intent on a game of strategy or a book, looked nothing like the ones in which he’d once lived. At the time Jack thought he wouldn't have been able to stand anything else, that coming back to his old home would have been the worst possible thing. It was only later that it occurred to him that if the setting had been the same, maybe he would have been able to recognize the signs he should have been so familiar with.

David tried very hard to be a good father and a good king. He never took up Silas’s pilgrimages but he did take the family on vacation at least once a year, to the country or the seaside. He tried to teach the boy to play piano, which didn't work out, and how to fix a car, which started the first real argument the father and son had ever had. Jack could feel the strength of David’s love every time his oldest son was present, but somehow he doubted his nephew could. The boy was too clever, too aloof, too much of a prince to relate to his farm-boy father. He was too much like Jack.

Not that the boy was gay. Jack couldn't stop himself from feeling a sick twinge of relief the first time his nephew was caught kissing some girl at a party at the age of thirteen. If David was half the man Jack hoped he was, he would never have dreamed of treating Jack the way Silas had, but Jack had to admit being straight was going to make life a lot easier for the little prince. The media had gone crazy when Jack had come out, and he wasn't even important any more, not really. He had pulled what few strings he had left to keep himself out of the papers for the past few years, though. David might have welcomed him back with open arms but he knew he was still bad press, even now when Silas’s name was practically a curse. Michelle, the more politically aware of the royal couple, had helped him out on that front, kept him out of the history books, stopped people from digging too deeply into certain things. 

 

Unfortunately, even Queen Michelle didn't have the power to erase people’s memories.

“He got expelled,” said David as Jack walked into the freshly remodeled royal kitchen one morning to see his sixteen-year-old nephew and the heir to the throne of Gilboa slumped at the kitchen table, pointedly avoiding anyone’s eyes.

“What for?” asked Jack, leaning against the counter beside his king.

“Fighting,” David answered, not taking his eyes off his son. Jack could tell he didn't know how to respond to this new-found rebellion. The Shepherd kids had all turned out to be basically perfect, which was unsurprising given that both their parents practically shone goodness.

“Must have been one hell of a fight, to get the crown prince expelled. Even I never got kicked out of school.”

“Eli did, once or twice,” said David, “always for fighting.”

“So what’s the problem?” Jack pushed off from the counter and went to stand beside the boy. “So he goes to another school. God knows he won’t have trouble getting in anywhere.”

“He didn't tell you why I got in the fight.” As the boy lifted his eyes from the table, David suddenly looked embarrassed.

“Why?” Jack raised his eyebrows at David, who looked away.

“Jacob Warner called you a traitor,” said the boy, eyes fixed on his uncle. “He said you tried to have Dad executed and then you tricked him into letting you back into government. So I punched him.” For a moment Jack was afraid to look down, afraid to see what was in his nephew’s expression. Did he thing Jack was a traitor? He was, of course, but he wasn’t ready to explain all that quite yet. Not to the boy he’d practically raised. “I know you’re not,” the prince continued. “He was wrong, you’re not a traitor. I told him that after I hit his head against the wall. I told his friends, too.”

“Thanks,” said Jack lamely, unsure how to respond to the first real support he’d had in about sixteen years. He felt his heart slide, steadily and coldly, into his stomach. Jack recognized the feeling from his youth, that dawning moment of horror when he’d look around at his surroundings and realize that somehow, inevitably, despite all his intentions, he’d managed to completely ruin something he’d cared about.

“Can I talk to you?” David jerked his head to the kitchen door. 

Jack followed him out. “Send him away,” he whispered to David as the door closed. 

“I want you to know I don’t—what?” David stared at him.

“Boarding school. Vacation. Something. Send him away.”

“Why?” Jack had spent six years at boarding school, but David could hardly go two weeks without his kids, and especially his eldest son.

“He spends too much time with me.” Jack swallowed, trying to find the words to articulate the dread in the pit of his stomach. “I’m worried—I’m a bad influence. I don’t want him to turn out like me.”

David put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack barely stopped himself from jerking away. “Jack, if I thought you were a bad influence, would I have let you take care of him for so long? I trust you.”

“You shouldn't,” Jack responded. “I may not be a traitor any more but I’m still the poster child for seditious heirs. Look,” he continued, seeing David was about to interject, “even if he doesn't decide to copy my choices, boarding school will get him in a new atmosphere, get him used to being on his own. It’s important.”

“If you think so,” said David uncertainly. “I wasn't raised like you were; I guess you would know what’s best for a prince.”

“Trust me. You said you did.”

 

A week later, on the day he’s meant to leave, the prince comes to visit Jack in his rooms in the palace. 

“Shouldn't you be packing?” Jack jokes, as the boy sits on the window seat. He really does look a lot like Jack.

“I did that last night.” The prince stares at his hands, and then looks at his uncle. “I don’t even know what kind of school this is. I don’t know what to expect.”

“Don’t worry; it’s not a military school. They won’t make you cut your hair.”

He smiles quickly, slightly, and then looks grave again. “I’m serious, Uncle Jack, I tried to ask Mother but she was distracted and Dad just hugged me and told me everything would be alright, which wasn't all that helpful.”

Jack almost smiled himself. David had never quite gotten the hang of dealing with a young prince and not just a young boy. “It’s a good school, I swear. I never went there but I knew some guys who did, and it wasn't bad. It’s not so different from where you just were. The mountains there are meant to be nice.”

“I guess. I just feel weird, leaving Shiloh for so long. I’m going to miss so many things.”

“You’re still the prince,” Jack reassured him. “At a little school like this, the world will practically revolve around you, trust me. You can build up your network. Make sure you have some real friends when you’re king.”

“Yeah,” said the prince, somewhat mollified. “I can do that. I’ll need to get ready for when I’m king. I’ll need to start now, so I can be strong. When I’m king.”

For a moment, Jack saw on his nephew’s face the same hunger he had felt in his youth, and he was afraid. It was good the prince was leaving. Boarding school would keep him away from Shiloh, away from the William Crosses of the world. “Yeah, when you’re king. But you have years to plan and prepare.”

The boy gave his uncle a half-smile, face starting to lose its sullenness and gain its usual composure. “Thanks. I hadn't thought of that. This’ll be ok.”

“Of course it will be. Even if it wasn't a good school you’d be fine. You’re smart enough to make things work for you.”

“I’d better be, I’m going to be king someday.” The boy got up. “I’ll miss you though. More than the rest of them. I know I probably shouldn't say that but it’s true.”

This time Jack does smile, but it’s from sudden nerves, not amusement. “I’ll miss you too. And so will your parents.” It’s good that he’s leaving.

 

It was a year and a half later when Jack realized he might have been wrong. His nephew came back for winter break, and didn't spend most of his time with Jack. He should have been pleased, it’s what he wanted when he sent him away, but it was somehow surprisingly unsettling, and not just because Jack missed the boy he raised. The prince wasn't just not with Jack, he wasn't with anyone the family knew. He visited the houses of friends in the city and avoided his siblings, and David laughed at Jack’s almost fatherly concern and Michelle told him it was just how teenagers are, but the boy was never like this before and Jack worried. He didn't even know why entirely, but he did. When the prince stayed out late one night David laughed again and made a show of threatening a drug test, but Jack noticed the boy was flushed with excitement and not anything artificial. When Jack asked him what he was doing he answered “service work,” and when Jack did a bit of digging and discovered that the crown prince and his friends had indeed been helping the homeless in the worse parts of Shiloh, it didn't help at all. It should've, but it didn't.

The break ended and the prince went back to his school, followed by a slew of paparazzi looking for stories about the handsome crown prince who had so nearly grown up and was doing so much for Gilboa. “He’s becoming really popular,” Michelle commented to Jack one day while they watched the news together.

“I noticed,” said Jack. “There was a full spread in the paper last week on his ‘secret charity work’ and his hairstyle.”

“You sound upset,” said his twin, turning to look at him. “I would have thought you’d be happy.”

“I thought I would be too,” he replied. “I don’t know what it is, Michelle.”

“He’s a lot like you, you know.”

“You make that sound like a good thing.”

“It is.”

“It really, really isn't.”

 

The first he heard of something being really wrong was a few weeks after the boy’s eighteenth birthday. There had been a big ceremony on the day where David officially recognized his oldest son as his heir, and then after that the prince announced he was going to one of the poorest parts of Gilboa, to the old capital before Shiloh, to spend a year helping the poor. It was a decision that met with great acclaim from virtually every media outlet in the country, and you could have powered a small city with the pride shining out of David during the announcement. Jack was proud too, then, but somewhat less than reassured by his nephew’s furtive look at him during the coronation ceremony, when he should have been looking at his father. Anyone who admired him more than David Shepherd was someone to be watched. He was still worrying about what that look had meant when Michelle had knocked on his door in the middle of the night.

“What?”

“News from Hebron. Can I come in? Please?” She seemed as if she’d just woken up, as if she’d been pulled out of bed for something important.

“Yeah, of course,” said Jack, stepping back. “In the middle of the night? What could he possibly have done that bad in less than three weeks?” 

Michelle stayed silent for a few seconds before answering. “It’s just rumors, just something that was picked up. But people are gathering there. Rich men, young men, some of his friends from school. It’s not that unusual, or it wouldn't be except other people are following them. People who have nothing to do with him, just ordinary people. They’re moving to Hebron, along with some businessmen and some old friends of—of Silas’s. It’s really not important on paper but I feel something’s wrong, Jack, like you said, something’s not right. If it was anyone else I would think…but he’s just a boy, Jack, he’s my son! I can’t be sure and I don’t want to bother David until I’m sure…”

“So you came to me, as the local expert on patricidal coups,” Jack said with a twist of his mouth to mask the pain in his chest.

“Jack…” Michelle looked tired, and confused, and on the verge of tears.

“Sorry. I don’t know what to do either. You need to tell David, though.”

“How can I? He loves him, you know how David is, he won’t think badly of someone he loves. For God’s sake, he didn't even believe Silas was bad until he started hitting him with a poker!” Michelle grew more agitated, pacing around Jack’s sitting room.

“I know that. He still trusts me, doesn't he? We can do something if we start now, but we need him,” Jack explained, talking fast to keep his sister’s attention. “He can talk to him, maybe, talk him down and explain things. David’s been nothing but a good father; he won’t harbor the same hate for him as I did for Silas. We can convince him not to do this. If it’s just about power, we can fix it.” God, he hoped it was just about power. Michelle agreed to tell David and to try to call the prince in Hebron, to talk to him. She left Jack standing in his room, contemplating the realization of his worst fears.

By the next morning, everything had gone to hell. Jack woke to five messages from Michelle and David, begging him to come talk to them. He changed quickly and met the royal couple in their rooms, preparing to leave for Hebron. Michelle was glassy-eyed and mechanical-looking, like Jack had sometimes seen his mother look, in the later days when things were falling apart. David just looked broken.

“He’s done it.” Michelle’s voice was flat.

“Done what?” Jack knew.

“Named himself king,” said David, sounding hollow. “We’re going to meet him. To try and talk to him. He has to understand. He can come back from this…”

“He can,” Jack said, “I know he can.”

David looked up at him. “He isn't you. You have to know that. You were mistreated, you were forced, you’d have been a better king than Silas ever was.”

“I know that,” Jack replied, a little too sharply. He softened when he saw David’s face, still shocked from the news of his son’s betrayal. “I know that, of course I know that. You've been a good father to him, you gave him no reason to hate you. But still, he wouldn't have got the idea as quickly if he hadn't grown up with a traitor.”

“We have to go,” Michelle said suddenly, jerking out of her daze. “We need to get to Hebron. Come with us. Please, Jack.” Somewhat reluctantly, Jack followed the two of them out the door. Whatever was coming, he didn't want to see it. 

 

The meeting place was an old wooden church, in the center of Hebron. It had been one of the first churches in Gilboa, where Reverend Samuels first preached and where Silas had first been declared king. Now it was David who stopped his convoy outside, ordering only a handful of military men to accompany him in. “This is my son,” he said, when his security adviser protested. “He won’t harm me, not if I come in good faith. Are you coming?” He turned to Jack.

“I can’t,” Jack managed. To see the boy he’d watched grow, the boy he’d taught, the boy he’d cared for and loved for eighteen years, go against God’s chosen king for something as transient as power, would be too much. He’d done and seen a lot of things, had Jack, but this was something he could not witness.

“Alright,” said David. He walked into the church with Michelle, and Jack stayed by the car.

 

He was standing by the car when the men went in, and when the voices from the church rose so loud he could hear the shouts outside. He was standing there when three stealth teams circled the church, ready to capture anyone who came out unfriendly to the king. And he stood there when he heard the shots, and David’s voice, rising high over anything else, a wail of mourning that was terrible to hear.

Jack felt like screaming when they brought the boy’s body out, felt like collapsing when he saw the blood. He would have screamed and cried had he been someone else, but he was Jack Benjamin, and so very quietly he turned his head away from the body of the child he’d raised and loved, and whispered his grief.

“Oh! Absalom! My son, my son, Absalom!”


End file.
